What can you do about civs on other continents?

xBlackWolfx

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I decided to try this game again, playing on noble. Got Lincoln.

As for what happened, well I haven't been attacked, and I haven't gone to war either. I currently have 5 cities, and am walled off by Genghis Khan. Beyond him, is Williem von Oranje whom I heard likes to backstab people. I was unsure which to make my friend and which to attack. I didn't like trying to befriend Williem since you know, he backstabs you. But I was finding it easier to make friends with Genghis Khan. And besides, he appears to be behind me on tech so I wasn't too worried about him. And it became a moot point after he walled me off from Williem. I thought about going to war with Genghis Khan, but he really didn't have any valuable resources. And besides, he was acting as a buffer zone between me and Willem (who is creative), so I kinda didn't want to eliminate him and make Williem my neighbor.

Anyway, got a world map from Williem to see if he knew where the other civs were, apparently they were all on another continent and I would've had to fight through Genghis Kham and Williem to get to them. Soon after, Germany found me. His score is over twice mine, he has a massive sprawling empire with Hammurabi as his vassal. Also, he's apparently the bestest friends with Williem, meaning that if I attacked Williem I'd have an Empire of over 10 cities coming after me.

I don't intend to play this game further, I consider it lost. But I don't know what I could've done to avoid this. I mean, It wasn't till past the year 1000 that I even knew where he was, let alone made contact with him. I couldn't have taken some of his cities, or tried to talk someone into attacking him. I mean, he owns half the land on my map! And in order to get to him, I would've had to hack through Genghis Khan, Williem, and I think Sitting Bull (I haven't made contact with that civ, I'm only guessing based off the cities names) to get to him. The land is basically a long strip with each nation in a row along it, so every nation only has one or two neighbors that block them off from everyone else.

I guess I'll upload the save file, just to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with. And I don't care how I managed my nation, I just want to know what I could've done about this. Perhaps if I had actually assaulted Genghis Khan early I might have enough resources where I wouldn't have to worry about a war with him, but if I did that I would've had to also take out Williem to prevent his borders from eventually overtaking me. I don't know, this situation looks like it was hopeless to me.
 

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I haven't looked at your save (not on computer), but I strongly suspect your problems came much earlier. On Noble you should be able to get a tech lead, circumnavigate the world, and make contact with the civs on the "other" continent before the ones on yours get optics. Getting cut off with only 5 cities seems to point to under expansion as one of your problems.
 
Well, 1st thing - too less cities even with same land. I found 2 good and one average city spot (with small change of New York placement). 8 cities can generate enough commerce (and Great people) to get ahead of Noble AI. Another thing - you need just 64% of land to win, not 100%. And you have standing army next to Mongols border... Use Genghis war with William - attack Mongols (some of military should be out of cities)... he is still 7 turns from Feudalism (can trade Code of Laws with map for Horseback Riding/Monotheism before attack)... With Mongols land and Rifling not far away, it should be possible to do something more to get that Domination...
 
The city with no hammers at the top right was a barbarian city I took, I think I kept it to try and keep Khan out of my land. That city has produced 2 great scientists for me, so I don't regret it. Besides, I wanted to try to make a specialist city. I was kind of using this play-through more as a learning experience than anything else. The bottom most one I made just to get access to the furs and deer for the happiness and health. They weren't in my cultural borders then. Honestly, that city's doing better than I expected. The one in the top left corner, yeah I don't know what I was thinking when I put that one there. It just doesn't have enough food. I was in the process of chaining irrigation up to it when I gave up.
 
I'm just going to start a new game, and this time try not to play nice and actually go to war with someone. It used to be I played this game just to overrun the entire map. Once in Civ 3, I got a domination victory but kept on playing just because I wanted to conquer the entire planet, even though this required me to rampage across another continent bigger than the one I started on, all with huge maintenance costs for the cities I was taking over there just so I could reinforce my army in between wars. I didn't really play the game to win, I played to kill everyone. Now, I just don't know how to balance killing versus doing other things.
 
I've looked at your. file. To stick to your question you basically have to try to be bolder and attack your neighbours starting with GK immediately in this game. You are more powerful according to powergraph, you have a tech lead and you have a proper army ready to attack and he is already at war with WvO. It would have been better to have some pikes to face his elephants, but he is 7 turns from getting feudalism, so further delay would make things harder because he might get longbows to defend his cities.
Also notice you can get Horse back riding through trade and train knights then.

A good strategy with continents is that you conquer your continent completely before other continents become a factor. That will keep you out of trouble.
On noble there is not that much to be feared you will see if you dare to fight. When you're done with GK and WvO you will have rifles to deal with the other continent.
 
Decided to lower the difficulty to warlord, since I obviously can't handle noble. My first settler got eaten by a lion. I deleted all my units, reduced research to zero, and started building pyramids in my capital just to avoid building anything useful, then declared war on my two neighbors. They never came for me no matter how many turns I waited. After poking around, I managed to find the 'retire' option. If only I knew about that 30 turns earlier, I would've had an even lower score.

Apparently I'm too Moderator Action: <snip> stupid to be playing strategy games. I can't play action games wort Moderator Action: <snip> , I can't even get past the first level of a mario game, seriously. And apparently I'm too Moderator Action: <snip> incompetent to play any game that requires any level of thought. So Moderator Action: <snip> this. Only played for a few hours and I'm quitting again for another Moderator Action: <snip> year. I really should just stop buying games. Why do I even bother to play when the only games I can beat are games where you can just grind until you're so op you can't possibly lose?

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Continent-based games are tricky. When I find myself unable to conquer my neighbours, I try to Chop + Whip Libraries in 3 different Cities which each have at least a 5-Food Resource and preferably another 3-Food square to work. Then, I regrow those 3 Cities to Size 4 and hire 2 Scientist Specialists in each.

The third Great Person requires 300 Great People Points (GPP) on Normal Game Speed, meaning that if I hire 2 Scientist Specialists in a City, making 3 GPP each, that's 2 Scientists * 3 GPP = 6 GPP per turn. 300 GPP / 6 GPP per turn = 50 turns.

So, it's a matter of getting Writing and Bronze Working early enough, getting up a few decent Cities, and then it comes down to the timing of when that last City starts hiring its 2 Scientist Specialists as to when to start the 50-turn countdown.

If my capital has a lot of Commerce, say, with Rivers and Commerce-based Resources, I'll use the first Great Scientist on an Academy in my capital. Otherwise, I will save it for Lightbulbing Optics. The other 2 Great Scientists get saved for Lightbulbing Astronomy.

For Optics, you'll need Sailing, Metal Casting, Machinery, Iron Working, and Compass, as well as Mathematics and Alphabet due to Mathematics and Alphabet being higher priorities for a Great Scientist to Lightbulb. For Astronomy, you'll also need Calendar.

Optics can let you meet overseas AIs before they come to meet you--whoever does the meeting first tends to be the one to get the most technology trades. Try not to trade away Optics and Astronomy. If you have Galleons from Astronomy, even a technologically backward army of yours can help you to take advantage of an overseas AI, as you can land some stacks of troops to capture and hold a couple of an AI's poorly-defended Cities by picking AI Cities that are poorly-defended. You can also steal Workers that are next to the coast if an AI hasn't already improved the land on your behalf.

Assuming that you don't have newer technologies, bring along 1 Archer, 2 Spearman, and 1 Axeman to defend a captured City, in addition to your attacking Units. There are other tactics that you can use, such as landing your stack on a Hills Forest square and hoping that the AI will attack your stack of Units with their stack of Units, but it's not always easy to do so. Your attacking stack will hopefully consist of 15 Units, so that even if you just have Axemen and Swordsmen, you'll have enough numbers to capture a good City or two. Preferably, you'll have also brought along some Catapults, if you've managed to also research Construction, but Catapults can also come in the second wave of attackers.

The goal is to capture a good City or two and then get a Peace Treaty. Since you should have been able to trade for techs, even if you lost more Units than you killed, you can give away a tech to get Peace. Since you didn't focus on building World Wonders, it's a great time to try to capture an overseas City with a good World Wonder in it, such as The Great Lighthouse or The Pyramids, or to capture a City that already has a Holy Shrine in it--which is more likely to occur when you let the AIs build Stonehenge and The Oracle instead of trying to build World Wonders yourself while also hiring so many Scientist Specialists, which isn't a reliable approach if you haven't already dominated your own continent's AIs.

Your new overseas holdings can be used to whip out more Military Units while your home continent Cities also build more Military Units and Galleons. Keep building up a large attack force and bring along some defensive Units and then start another war to capture another good City or two from another overseas AI.

When you first meet an AI, if you trade it a tech, it will give you +4 Diplo Attitude bonus for Fair and Forthright Trading, but you might also incur a -4 Diplo Attitude penalty with any AI who has met that AI and who treats that AI as their Worst Enemy. So, it can be worth holding off on tech trading until you've met at least a couple of AIs on the same continent as each other, just to get a feel for which AI is someone else's Worst Enemy and then can decide whether to trade with that AI or not.

Depending upon which AIs you meet, it may sometimes be possible to declare war on one AI and then bribe another AI into war with the first AI, to provide a distraction for both of their armies. Doing so can backfire as the AI that you bribed into the war may build more military troops than it otherwise would have and those troops may not get sent into battle. If you can instead bribe AIs to Stop Trading with each other, that approach might be preferable, just to avoid losing your captured Cities from the first war (which you are still defending, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem anyway, right?) to the second AI on which you declare war due to the AI on whom you declared war second having Open Borders with the AI on whom you declared war on first.

Basically, try to launch some short wars with a lot of force being packed into a single location at once thanks to the help of your Galleons and focus on capturing the valuable Cities--ones with World Wonders, Holy Shrines, or Happiness Resources, then leave your captured Cities defended with a decent garrison to prevent losing those Cities easily.

AIs are not well-equipped to handle naval warfare and if you are playing a map with a Cylindrical World Wrap or Toroidal World Wrap (meaning not a Flat World Wrap that represents just a small portion of the world), you should be able to get the Circumnavigation bonus yourself. Even without that bonus, Galleons can move 4 squares per turn. AIs are great at watching your army march over land toward their Cities and then being prepared when your army arrives at that AI's Cities' doorsteps, but when you can land your troops next to the doorstep of one of the AI's best Cities on the first turn of war, you'll be catching that AI with its pants down.

You can also choose which AI to attack first, due to the maneuverability of your Galleons, meaning that if one AI already has Feudalism and Longbowmen, you can optionally skip that AI if your initial army doesn't have Catapults and instead go for a softer AI target until your second wave of attackers arrives, which should come with Catapults, as you'll have had enough time to have researched Construction by then.

With Lightbulbing Astronomy, and with you not trading away Optics and Astronomy, it will be a while before the AIs can build a fleet of their own, meaning only the Cities that you capture overseas will be vulnerable to counter-attack. If you've been friendly with your home continent's neighbours, they hopefully won't backstab you, and the fact that you increased your military Power will also deter them from attacking you--an AI doesn't calculate the fact that your army is far overseas and will still give you full "credit" for your military Power, regardless of where the Units are currently stationed in the world.

This strategy is about getting to Astronomy first, well ahead of the AIs. If you get to Astronomy later, it can still work, but you'll likely need Catapults and/or Trebuchets and a better army than just a large stack of Axemen plus a few mixed City Defenders for your first wave of attack, meaning that the timing of hiring your third City's worth of 2 Scientist Specialists is the key timing factor.

Also, you'll want to avoid learning one of Meditation until after you have Lightbulbed Astronomy, so that Philosophy doesn't come up as the Lightbulb option in place of Astronomy. If you accidentally learn Meditation, say, by getting it in trade or simply forgetting, then you'll need to avoid both of Code of Laws and Drama until after you have learned Astronomy.

Similarly, you'll want to avoid learning both of Theology and Civil Service until after you have Lightbulbed Astronomy, so that Paper doesn't come up as the Lightbulb option in place of Astronomy.

If you do have access to Iron, then you could instead make the stack of Units which will defend a captured City be 2 Crossbowmen and 1 Spearman.

The biggest keys are getting your 3 Scientist-specialist Cities started, not taking technologies in trade that will alter the Great Scientist Lightbulbing preferences away from Astronomy, and then planning out your whipping of Galleons and troops so that you can go in with roughly 6 Galleons full of Units to ensure that you can capture and hold your targeted overseas AI City. Get the good Cities first, defend them, make Peace, and then whip more troops from captured Cities, whip more troops at home, and get ready for the next assault on a different overseas AI victim.

Over time, you'll be capturing the AIs' best Cities and then defending them (you can whip City Walls, too, once those Cities come out of City Revolt), and you'll be using your homeland Cities to pump out a steady stream of troops without the need to really defend your homeland Cities.

Remember, the technological advantage is your friend--once an AI is willing to talk with you after several turns of war, it's just a matter of paying a tech to get out of a war that isn't currently going your way.

As for capturing AI works from the sea, be sure to land 2 or more troops on a captured Worker, as an AI will very happily counter-attack a single Unit of yours that steals its Worker this way, but the AI will think twice about attacking when you land 2 or 3 troops just to capture a Worker. After you've captured a key City or two and are able to defend that City or those Cities, excess surviving attacking troops can grab Workers in this way (landing from Galleons) while you wait for the AI to be willing to talk with you and sign a Peace Treaty, all while you're building up more troops for your next AI invasion.

If you own an AI's good Cities, then as you get more technologies, you can better defend those Cities from counter-attack over time, but the key is to get those Cities when it's easy to capture them and then hold onto them, so that the player defending those Cities as technologies get learned world-wide and defending Units' technologies increase ends up being you, rather than an AI, so that you can get the easy City captures and the AIs will then be the ones complaining that it's too hard to capture the well-defended Cities.


Sure, players who happen to dominate their own continent may not need to resort to these tactics, since, in a continents game, dominating one's continent early on does give a lot more options, but I find that it's not always possible or not always preferable to beat up on my nearby neighbours, leaving this 3-Library-plus-2-Scientist-Specialists-per-Library-City approach as a way to get yourself back into the game in a tactically advantageous way.

Sure, other options also exist, such as avoiding learning Meditation, learning Code of Laws relatively early on, and using Caste System to hire Scientist Specialists, but that's getting into more advanced tactics that will work better on maps with a decent amount of Happiness Resources and a City or two with 3+ Food Resources to be able to hire a lot of Scientist Specialists from one or two Cities without the need for Libraries... it's nice to hope for such a case, but it's not a tactic that you can always depend on.
 
Decided to lower the difficulty to warlord, since I obviously can't handle noble. My first settler got eaten by a lion. I deleted all my units, reduced research to zero, and started building pyramids in my capital just to avoid building anything useful, then declared war on my two neighbors. They never came for me no matter how many turns I waited. After poking around, I managed to find the 'retire' option. If only I knew about that 30 turns earlier, I would've had an even lower score.

Apparently I'm too Moderator Action: <snip> stupid to be playing strategy games. I can't play action games wort Moderator Action: <snip> , I can't even get past the first level of a mario game, seriously. And apparently I'm too Moderator Action: <snip> incompetent to play any game that requires any level of thought. So Moderator Action: <snip> this. Only played for a few hours and I'm quitting again for another Moderator Action: <snip> year. I really should just stop buying games. Why do I even bother to play when the only games I can beat are games where you can just grind until you're so op you can't possibly lose?

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Not excusing the profanity but frustration with this challenging game is understandable. Been playing off and on for seven years with rare success at Emperor level (maybe four or five wins, Spacerace and a couple Diplos in perhaps two hundred tries). This latest effort was initially successful as Hannibal on what turned out to be a Pangaea: starting with only two cities I prosecuted a succesful Elepult war against Cyrus and eventually wiped him out, grabbing a northeast border city from Brennus in the bargain.

By then it was around AD 1500 and well behind in tech I switched to building Wealth to beeline Steel and Rifles. Attacked Hatty about 1800 AD after upgrading Trebs and spamming Rifles plus Cannon. Took two cities and destroyed two more but was already facing Artillery so sued for peace. Tried to catch up again but Brennus--who'd joined me in attacking Hatty--used her territory to attack me with Arty, Tanks, Cavalry, etc. so gave up at that point.

You can see from the 4000 BC save that Carthage starts out with three seafood resources but it's at the end of a peninsula which extends from desert with only a wheat resource for the second city. Perhaps I should've started over but the game is alluring and fun to play so what the heck?
 

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Firstly posting a 1856ad save will not really get you any useful feedback.

This start is a seriously poor start. You would of needed a galley to settle the land north of you for your 3rd/4th cities or to attack Persians early. There is a lot of jungle here too making 3rd city difficult. Most food resources are covered in jungle already.

The start build here is more complicated. You have no 3f resource for faster growth. WB takes 10 turns. Worker 15. Fish is best resource for first WB. Early bronze working could allow you to whip the worker at size 2 once the workboat is complete. Then to get a second food resource you would need to chop a further workboat.

Anyway had a mini attempt at start to 1440bc.

Spoiler 1400bc :

So as stated above. Built workboat for 10 turns.
Grew to size 2 on WB.
Switched to slavery.
Switch to worker at size 2 and whip once I had over 30 hammers.
Chopped with worker for next workboat.
Completed 3rd workboat with a chop.
Size 4 whipped settler with 40+ hammers invested.

My warrior was fogbusting near wheat.
Techs - BW-IW- sailing

Settled next city next to the iron. Took settler ages to reach the site. Ackkkk!!!
Mined the iron and belated decided to tech the wheel.
Once iron and road hooked up I chopped a sword in 2nd city and whipped swords in my capital.

During this period Persians sent 2 workers to his second city above my iron city. I declared on Persians stealing both workers.

I built 4 swords and used 2 warriors and headed for his capital. 3 archers defending. I lost 3 sword but I took the city. He whipped a 3rd archer.

Captured his other city above the iron.

1400bc and I have 4 cities. Albeit a capital whipped heavily. I am lacking quite a few basic techs but I have the land now.

Plenty of room to expand now. Persian capital have gems. Sweet.

Overall difficult start. Without knowing about the iron it would of been even harder. Albeit you had a horse resource north of your capital. Sailing/galley could of worked here.

Great light house might work really well here with a few coastal cities.

 

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Up to 1200bc

Spoiler 1200bc :

Ventured further north with my few remaining swords. Took another of Persians cities but lost 3 swords on a hill city. The city fell and he has 1 size 1 city left.

My economy is losing money at 0% science but manageable with writing in 8 turns and 1f3c coastal tiles. I plan to settle 1-2 more cities. One to grab the gems. Rice/dye will be nice long term. Maybe grab the island city for 2c trade routes.

Right now this game is very winnable. Although it needed the right strategy, micro and resources to make this work. GLH will save my economy I hope. many turns off this wonder.
 

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Thanks Gumbolt. Your handling of this difficult start is further demonstration, if any is needed, of the difference between a mediocre player such as myself and one as experienced, savvy and imaginative as yourself. Kudos!

Edit: What I did was settle the second city next to the desert wheat, then wait until I got Construction for Elepults. Obviously this was way too sloooow. Will try to do better, but then some cats got it, and some cats ain't. Apparently yours truly is one of the latter. Thanks again for taking the time to critique. Cheers!
 
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Yes desert wheat and waiting for phants with just 2 cities was a huge mistake. You don't win games with 2 cities in the BC era of the game. Always be thinking how you can get 4 or so plus cities by 1000bc. With early rushes on Emperor you can easily get 5-6 cities. Dates vary pending on unit choice. I was lucky Persians had no metal. Horse archer rushes are one of the best early on.
 
Yes. Easier said than done of course, especially for those of us who are sagaciously challenged.

So what would you have done if you hadn't known beforehand about Iron being in shouting distance? Go for Horse Archers after settling on or near the cross-channel Horses (would have had to research AH and explore first IIRC)? Reason I ask is 'cuz in games I've studied IW is usually bypassed and picked up later for Currency or somesuch, unless you're playing as Romans and want Praets pronto. Thanx.
 
Well this game screamed for iw. On jungle maps iw early can be a good thing. Others may have gone directly for GLH here but I think given land you needed other techs.

This is a tough start if you pick the wrong techs early on.

One skill on higher levels is knowing which techs to skip. You have to beeline something. If an early tech offers little it can be good to skip it completely. Here you have lots of sea resources but a very weak farm resource. Even ah offers little.
 
Played Black Wolf's Lincoln game from the 1320ad save. Declared on Genghis immediately, whipped and chopped a few trebs, LBs and pikes and eliminated him about 1600ad. Techwise I went for lib>economics before finishing rifling. Capture gold and economics GM TM let me upgrade CR swords to CR rifles, declared on Willem and capped him fairly easily. Settled NW island, built a couple of infill cities which put me up to 13 cities, then grew cities and improved economy before going to war with arty and infantry. Long slog, Bismark had silly number of units but got there in the end. Conquest/domination 1890ish.
 

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